Bad Things

by Michael Marshall

  The sheriff evidently caught this. “Does Mr. Henderson have business here?”

  “Not that I’m aware,” Cory said.

  “Maybe you’d like to walk with me back down to the gate,” Pierce said, taking me lightly by the elbow.

  “Yes,” Brooke added. “Run along. We’ve tidying to do.”

  I pulled my arm away from the policeman and started walking. When we reached the road I saw a police car was already there waiting for the sheriff, with Deputy Greene behind the wheel.

  The gate swung shut behind us. Pierce and I hadn’t spoken on the way down the drive, but before he got in the car, he turned to me. “I’m not going to have a problem with you, am I?”

  “That depends on whether you start doing any police work.”

  He looked down the road. “Mr. Henderson, what happened to your son was a sad thing but it doesn’t give you a free pass. Neither does the service you used to perform for your country.”

  “Somebody thought I ought to see a piece of paper last night,” I said. “You should hear about it, too.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It related to a Romanian woman called Ilena, suspected in the murder of a sex trafficker in Europe ten years ago, her whereabouts currently unknown. It was pushed under my motel door. Then somebody called my room at hourly intervals throughout the night. You think either of those are things Ellen Robertson might do? If not, then she isn’t the problem here.”

  The sheriff looked away at the trees for a moment, then back at me. “Remember what I said.”

  He and his deputy spoke for a moment once the car door was shut, and then they pulled away.

  I’d opened my own car and was about to get in when I heard a woman’s voice, slowly reciting numbers.

  Brooke was standing about a foot from the other side of the gate. Her arms were folded, and the warm smile was back. Once she saw she’d got my attention, she said the numbers again, three separate series of digits.

  “So what’s that?” I asked.

  “Our house phone. My cell, Cory’s cell. Write them down. That way you’d be able to establish that none of them were involved in any alleged persecution of you last night.”

  I nodded. “Probably you feel that makes you smart, Brooke. In fact, it’s additional evidence of premeditation.”

  “I don’t know who called you last night, Mr. Henderson, but it honestly wasn’t me.”

  I knew I was playing into her hands, but I didn’t care. “What’s the real problem here, Brooke?”

  “Nothing that won’t be resolved. And actually I should probably thank you, as your arrival seems to have helped matters along. Your presence has unbalanced Ellen somewhat, don’t you think? Perhaps your raw masculinity simply turned her pretty head.”

  “No, seriously,” I persisted. “Is it that she’s prettier than you? I mean, I’m sure you’ve noticed. Probably Cory has, too. Has it been trying, having a more attractive woman around?”

  She laughed.

  “And younger, too, which is worse. Is that what makes it difficult?”

  I reached into the car, grabbed something from the passenger seat, and walked over to the gate. She made no move to step back. I stood in front of her, opened the neck of the sweater, and checked the label.

  “Dior,” I said. “Expensive, right? I assume you’d know. I guess your father probably bought a lot of that kind of thing for you in the past. Did he stop, once Ellen came along? Did it slip his mind, once he had a life of his own again? After all, just because we get older— and you are getting older, Brooke, no matter how much exercise you do—it doesn’t stop us all being about ten-years-old inside, does it? Not when it comes to the people who gave birth to us.”

  Her face was blank now.

  “Is it that simple? Is Ellen the little sister who came along and stole Daddy’s love?”

  “You’re a very dull and stupid man.”

  “I’ve heard it said. So—what should I do with this sweater? Find Ellen and give it to her, or do you believe it belongs to you? Like Black Ridge and everything else in a fifty-mile radius?”

  “Perhaps the sledgehammer approach used to work in your old profession, but it means nothing here.”

  I let that one go, the easiest way of hiding that it had thrown me to have this kind of thing dropped into the conversation twice in five minutes. Now that she was not smiling, Brooke’s face had become more handsome, hinting at the black and white photographs one sometimes comes across of pioneer women, sitting fierce and implacable alongside men who stood in the picture to prove their dominance, but who could not have survived a week without their wives. She would even have been very attractive, were it not for her eyes, which were dark and flat, as if painted on pieces of old stone.

  As I turned to go, she spoke again. “She caused the death of my father.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said, though her voice did not sound as it had before. The sun was out and it seemed a little warmer, suddenly. Also as though the odor I’d caught off the sweater had intensified. It was a dry smell, but still sweet.

  “You don’t know people like I do,” she said. “Or understand how everything links to everything else.”

  “I think you meet the people you deserve.”

  “Very deep. I like that. And so tell me. What did your poor wife do, to deserve you?”

  She turned and walked away up the drive, toward where her brother stood watching us.

  CHAPTER 25

  “Where the hell are you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  It had taken Ellen Robertson nearly two hours to answer her phone, and I wasn’t in the mood for being screwed around. “What do you mean, you don,t know?”

  “I . . . I’m just not sure.”

  I established that when she’d checked herself out of the hospital, a little after eight the previous evening, she’d arranged for a cab from town to come pick her up. At first she’d intended to go back to her house, but on the way home she realized she simply couldn’t face the Robertsons, and told the driver to drop her in Black Ridge instead.

  “You could have come to me.”

  “I didn’t know where you were staying.”

  “You have my cell number.”

  “I didn’t think it would be a good idea.”

  When she arrived in town she wound up walking into a bar, at the opposite end of town from Kelly Street and the Mountain View. She got rather more to drink than to eat and soon realized she wasn’t feeling right. A man sitting at the bar became attentive.

  This culminated in a dispute that required the intervention of a bartender. After the man had been encouraged out into the night, Ellen had a few more drinks before finally making her way to a motel. This morning she’d woken early and checked out on autopilot. She didn’t sound at all clear on where she’d been since then.

  “Well, what can you see right now?” I asked.

  “Some places.”

  “What are they called?”

  She listlessly read out a couple of business names.

  “What? Did you just say ‘The Write Sisters’?”

  “Yes,” she mumbled.

  “Turn around. The coffee shop is right opposite the bar where you and I met. The bar you used to go to with Gerry, remember?” She didn’t say anything.

  “I think you may have left the hospital just a little prematurely, Ellen. I’m going to come take you back.”

  “I’m not safe there.”

  “Trust me,” I said, without thinking. “You’re better there than at home right now.”

  Vague though she was, she was onto that fast enough. “Why? What do you mean?”

  I had little choice but to tell her what had happened at her house. “So now do you believe I’m in danger?”

  “I never had any problem believing Brooke and Cory meant you harm,” I said. “Not after I’d met them. Look, will you go get a coffee, wait for me?”

  “I’m not going back to the hospital
.”

  “Ilena, please just do as I ask.”

  There was silence. When she finally replied, she sounded very far away. “So. You know.”

  “It makes no difference to me.”

  “It will. It always does.”

  When I parked on Kelly Street I spotted a female figure slumped over one of the tables in the window of the coffee shop. I parked and walked quickly inside. The place was pretty full. I passed the mechanic guy, sitting by himself with the local paper, who gave me a cursory nod.

  When I got to her table, it seemed to take Ellen a moment to recognize me. “I waited,” she said eventually. “But I’m still not going.”

  “You want something to drink?”

  She shook her head. I went to order coffee at the counter. The blue-haired girl had evidently turned up for work after all, and was fiddling with the coffee machine. Her shoulders looked bowed. I had to order twice before she mumbled that she’d bring it over.

  Back at the table I looked Ellen up and down. “You actually don’t look so good.”

  “How charming.”

  “I don’t mean on the outside. Are you getting headaches?”

  She shook her head. “Feel a bit dizzy. That’s all. I need something to eat, maybe.”

  “No, you’ve got a concussion,” I said firmly. “You need to go back to the hospital.”

  “What did I say when you first got here?”

  “I’m not going to drag you there,” I said. “I’m not your dad. I’m just telling you what I think. It’s up to you what you do with the information.”

  “How was I when you saw me in the hospital?”

  “Fine. Pretty much. You were saying some weird shit, but that seems to be how you roll.”

  “But now you think I have a concussion?”

  “Onset can be delayed, which is why they keep people in for observation, and why you should still be there. You’ve got to get yourself feeling strong enough to take on Brooke and Cory.”

  “Take them on?”

  “They didn’t just mess with your stuff this time. They’ve involved the police.”

  “I can’t fight them. Don’t you understand yet? It’s not just them.”

  “I know that. The sheriff is looking for you right now, convinced or pretending to be convinced that you’re responsible for acts of vandalism against people he feels honor bound to protect. And he knows your real name now, too.”

  She hadn’t appeared to be concentrating, but the last sentence got through to her. She stared at me, looking miserable. “How? How does he know?”

  “He needed to understand that you’re being—”

  “You told him.”

  “Yes.”

  “And so everyone knows now. You know, he knows . . .”

  “He won’t spread it around,” I said. “He’s basically a good—”

  “Everybody knows,” she repeated dismally. “No more Ellen. Welcome back, Ilena.”

  “Ellen . . .”

  It felt colder, suddenly, as if a breeze had come down the street and made its way in through the cracks around the door to come sit with us at the table. Ellen wouldn’t look me in the eye.

  There was no sign of my coffee. I glanced over at the counter but the girl there didn’t seem to have moved since I came in. I assumed she must be doing something, however, as I could smell something sweet in the air, presumably a syrup, oddly strong. I heard a very faint sound and turned back.

  “Ellen—stop that, for God’s sake.”

  “Stop what?”

  “Your hands.”

  She glanced down, apparently mystified, to see she was slowly raking the fingernails of one hand across the back of the other, hard enough to draw blood.

  She moved her fingers away, and looked at the scratch marks, a pattern of long lines, crossing one another at crooked angles. I didn’t know what to say and I couldn’t read the expression on her face. It seemed like simple curiosity.

  “You need to get back to the hospital, Ellen.”

  She shook her head. “This has nothing to do with me.”

  “What are you saying? That this is Ilena, making you do this? You still need—”

  “I'm Ilena, you asshole,” she said loudly. “What, you think she was some stupid bitch, into self-harm? Poor little Romanian slut, couldn’t protect herself from the bad men, so she cuts herself instead?”

  Around the café, a few of the other patrons were not being very subtle about lifting their eyes above the level of the local paper. “Keep your voice down,” I said calmly. “Did Gerry know?”

  She breathed out heavily. “Not in the beginning.”

  “Not information you’re going to lead with. I can see that.”

  “But I told him later. Before we were married.”

  “Everything?”

  “Things nobody should have to tell anyone. Especially a man they love.”

  “He didn’t care?”

  “Of course he cared. He wanted to go back in time and find the men who’d done bad things to me. I told him time doesn’t work like that, and I didn’t need protecting, but . . . from him I didn’t mind. He did it without making it feel like he was taking anything away from me. And the thing that happened in Berlin? He said he was proud of me.”

  “I would be, too.”

  “You shouldn’t,” she said, suddenly distant again. “Lately, I have not been so strong. Or so good.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “People always look after number one, right?”

  It seemed for a moment as if she was going to say something else, but she clammed up.

  “This feeling you’ve had,” I said. “Of being watched, in danger. Did you ever feel it before Gerry died?”

  She shook her head. “I felt very sad sometimes, for no reason. It’s why we had quite such a bad argument about the children thing, on that day. I just . . . everything seemed to be going wrong. To feel as if it was dying. And for a few days beforehand I also didn’t sleep very well. But that’s not the same.”

  She hesitated for a moment. “Did you understand those things I was telling you in the hospital?”

  “What do you mean, ‘understand’?”

  “Did you understand that none of it really happened?”

  I stared at her. “What do you mean? I thought you said it was a witch.”

  “Yes, that’s what I’m saying. They make you believe things that aren’t true. See things that aren’t there. Those things I said—they didn’t really happen. None of them.”

  I felt wrong-footed and dumb. If you’ve privately decided someone’s deluded, then you want to be the person to tell them that. “So . . .”

  “It was in my head.” She hesitated, and then seemed to come to a decision. “It was supposed to stop. But it hasn’t. I was stupid to believe it would ever be taken off. That it even could. And yesterday evening . . . I heard tapping on my window at the hospital.”

  “Tapping?” I said, thinking of scratching sounds against the back of my motel room. “What was it?”

  “Gerry,” she said.

  “Gerry?”

  “He was perched on my windowsill. Outside. Like a big bird.”

  I felt the skin of the back of my neck tighten.

  “You know he wasn’t really there, right? And that you were on the second floor of the building?”

  She shrugged.

  “What . . . was he doing?”

  “He was looking in at me as if he had never loved me.” She glanced away. “It’s why I had to leave the hospital. But it’s too late.”

  “The day he died,” I said, trying to steer us back toward matters I could comprehend. “Do you think he’d changed his mind about something? You said that . . .”

  But then there was a scream from behind us.

  I turned to see a woman was backing away from the counter, staring at the server behind it. The blue-haired girl was standing exactly as she had been, hunched over the big coffee machine. But billows of steam were
coming out of it now. Far too much steam.

  As the customer kept screaming, the girl slowly turned from the machine. Her face was pure white. Her hands were bright red, held out in front. When she came out from behind the counter you could see the steam coming off them.

  She looked sluggishly over at me as I got up and started toward her.

  I stopped, held up my hands to show I meant no harm. I remembered her name—Jassie—and said it. She looked at me again, confused, with a look of dislocation from everything around her.

  “Why haven’t you got a face?” she said suddenly, backing away.

  I don’t see how she could have mistaken my intentions, which were simply to help, but her own features stretched into something that must have been appalling to feel from within: her mouth falling slack as if melting, eyes wide with utter distrust and horror, as if suddenly remembering that no one around her was real and everyone meant her harm.

  She tried to get away from me, not even in the direction of the door, but stumbling toward the big picture window.

  I want to believe that she tripped, but I don’t think that’s what happened. She did collide heavily with one of the empty chairs—but it wasn’t that which pitched her forward. She did it herself. She got to within a yard of the big window and then threw herself headfirst into the glass. It shattered.

  As her throat was borne down onto the jagged edge below, driven by her momentum and weight, the window above collapsed into large, vicious shards that sheered down into her back and neck and head and smashed to oblivion into the floor around her.

  It sounded like most of the world’s noises happening at once, and then there was utter silence.

  A few people got up immediately and ran out of the café. The rest were frozen in place, staring at the remains of the window, the beached shape straddling across the inside and outside, blood pooling underneath it so fast it looked like film speeded up. One arm and a leg twitched briefly, and for a moment it looked as through the girl was trying to roll sideways, but then stillness came upon her body like a rock sinking into water.

  I’ve seen the moment of death often enough to know it—but evidently you can recognize it first time around. People started to cry out then, to talk and shout. A couple got on their cell phones and started barking at emergency operators.